Sidhe
History Even the Fae have a limited understanding of what the Tuatha de Daanan were. They existed in the Time of Legends at the dawn of creation itself. By any human description they were gods but not the oldest of gods- those were the primordials. Among their gifts to the first race of Man they gave the ability to dream which in turn brought the Age of Legends into formation. First came the dragons and creatures now bygone from everything but the deepest Dreaming. The Tuatha de Daan fought against the primordial gods and defeated them, driving them into the Abyss. This brought the Age of Heaven to an end and the Age of Beauty sung itself into existence with the emergence of the sidhe, the pooka, the giants and the sluagh. The spirits of everything were awake and the Fae, the most beloved of the Tuatha de Daanan's children, held dominion. Then came the Bronze Age, the Age of Legends, roughly 3000 BC in the modern paradigm. Vampires, the children of Lilith had spread outwards from the Middle East. The Skinchangers, the Garou and others like them, kept the human population in check and served as the enforcers of the spirits called the Umbrood. The Tuatha de Daan began to change. Some became tyranical and cruel. They fought each other and then vanished from the world not instantly but slowly as one age fell into another. The Fae as a whole began to change as humanity's beliefs, desires and stories evolved. Then abruptly there was the Sundering and reality fractured into the primal realms birthing the Age of Beautiful Sadness. Everything left within the terrestrial world was diminished and no longer exactly what it had been before- not the Fae, the prodigals or humans. Humans began to congregate in cities and monarchistic tribes. This in turn reflected in the Fae developing thier own monarchies rules by sidhe Kings and Queens and the first freeholds were crafted. Over the next two millenia, there was increasing distance between the two realms and more Fae retreated completely into Arcadia. The Shattering was in slow progress before 1348-1350 but the events in the human world, most notably the Black Plague and the battle at Silver's Gate brought about the sealing of all the gates, even secret trods to the Nightmare Realms. The Twilight Time/Interregnum The Houses to return in the Resurgence were the last to leave for Arcadia. Scathach was the only house to stay behind, taking up the Changeling Way like the remaining commoners and becoming Earthbound. A new class of nobility rose, a combination of Scathach sidhe and commoners. Called the burgess, they kept the Fae from fragmenting completely and provided a foundation for the kithain over the six hundred year period. After the Resurgence The Arcadian Sidhe were forced to possess adult humans in order to protect themselves in a different rite than the Changeling Way as its commonly performed. The human's soul was taken to Arcadia. The banality-saturated reality of the human world and the temporary immersion into the human's receeding consciousness left most of the sidhe temporarily off-balanced and some even permanantly prone to bedlam or derangement. Now that the sidhe are better established the Waking Lands, they usually start their lives as children. There is still a transmutation of souls that differs from the "Changeling Way" of the Earthborn and leads to the great unknown of what actually happens to the sidhe when they die. These childling sidhe tend to retain more human memories and experiences and are passionately protected by adult sidhe. It is possible that very young sidhe are not true changelings at all but symbiotes. As a general rule childling sidhe regain their pre-Interregnum memories slowly and their memories of Arcadia not at all. The Arcadian sidhe who returned in 1969 have no clear memories of what happened in Arcadia but they are left a sense of a vast, horrific war. The Uasal sidhe fell into almost immediate conflict with the burgess nobility who'd risen in their place. Not all of the returning sidhe, only a radical handful, were responsible for the Beltaine Massacre but that even brought on a war that stretched well beyond North America. In Cymru, five houses allied together to retake the ancient holdings and regain control of the Fae. The Accordance War in Cymru went decidingly in the favor of the sidhe and their allies but King Kendall made generous reparations towards the burgess nobility. 5% of the kithain in Cymru are Sidhe; half of this are Arcadians and the other half Scathach and other earthbound sidhe. The Sidhe Lifestyle Most of the sidhe nobility spend as little time as possible in their mortal seemings interacting with humans. They are untethered from human prohibitions regarding sex, sensuality, and nudity. They often combine cantrips to weave realms of pleasure almost beyond human imagination. Most commonly they have romantic liasons with one another. Their next most typical partners are satyrs - they have a unique and sometimes overpowering attraction for each other that can become dangerous in its intensity and chaos. The sidhe's greatest weakness is their ignorance of human society. They are anachronistic by nature and immerse themselves in restoring their desmenes to pre-Sundering glory. Kithain artisans and masons are richly rewarded for building new wonders for the nobility. Innovations in kithain architecture incorporate remembrances of Arcadia and modern human construction techniques. The long-term nature of the Dreaming in a given area conforms to its lord's general character with short-term moods reflecting in temporary way like tempests, blood-colored rivers. There are a few sexual acts taboo to the kithain except those that violate the Escheat and Morpheus Sabinis. Humans are comparitively fragile and a love affair with any supernatural creature is dangerous for many reasons. Kithain can inadvertently expose thier human lovers to the Dreaming in ways that leads to mortal bedlam. Love is a form of impromptu theatre for the sidhe, especially House Fion and other romanticists. It's pagentry, domination, artistic expression and a means of acquiring glamour all rolled into once. Kinain love seems capricious and even psychotic by human standards but that does not make it less "real" or sincere. It involves games and politics like all other facets of sidhe culture. Arranged marriages are relatively common above the noble houses. They are usually arranged to cement treaties between the houses or between duchies and principalities. The practice is slowly gaining popularity among certain common kith. They tend to be politically successful and emotionally satisfying. Sidhe & Prodigals In Cymru, there are no laws against romantic encounters with prodigals despite the danger posed by such encounters. *Vampires- In CC, vampires are not the repositories of banality that is described in the source books. However, kithain blood can easily become a blood exclusivity for a fledgling vampire. Elders, needing more potent blood than humans, can become addicted and are likely to frenzy if they drink directly from the source, potentially killing their partner on accident. *Shifters- The most common kithain-prodigal pairings, they tend to be powerful, short lived affairs except for shifters who are also feyblooded and oathbound to their lovers as vassals, living separate from their own kind. *Wizards- Hedge mages can become easily enamored by the fae and in Cymru, there are legends of feyblooded wizards who are the product or production of romantic affairs with the sidhe. They are easily embroiled into kithain politics and destroyed as collatoral damage. *Ghosts- Ghosts by their nature are tragic and cursed entities. Kithain who fall in love with them (or more likely, remain in love with a human beyond death) can pine themselves into bedlam and twist their way into the shadowlands to become banshees (Bean Sidhe), trapped by their own pain and pathos. The Politics of the Sidhe Most of the Kithain nobility (Seelie and Unseelie) have a strong code of ethics but their standards are highly stratified and not easily understood or appreciated outside of the nobility. They are not humanitarian ethics- especially where humans are concerned but they are just by the standards of the Escheat. They have a highly stratified legal system including the Court of Dragons- the official governing body of Cymru, founded by King Kendal in 1971 in recognition of High King David's Parliament of Dreams. It hosts ambassadors from every duchy within the principalities and cantrevs of the kingdom. Court Structure *Open Court- passionate and raucuous affairs either held in the freehold court rooms or open venues like gardens, festivals, taverns. The best opportunity for commoner kithain to address or petition the nobility. *Close Court- formal courts with strictly enforced adherence to decorum. Most of the day-to-day decisions of the nobility are made here and the only commoners present are those in the service of the nobles. *Privy Councils- secret meetings between the lord and their closest advisors where matters of great importance are discussed with less decorum and more honesty. *Reune- extremely clandestine meetings between allies, lovers, enemies where history-making decisions can be made behind everyone else's back. Seelie vs Unseelie No kith demonstrate the extremes that the Sidhe when it comes to the Courts and their legacies as they participate in them. Both have their own sense of honor and tend to live out the codes of their respective courts to the fullest. Unseelie sidhe are stereotyped as more callous towards humans, more sadistic in their pleasures and politically ruthless. They don't repress their darkest impulses the same way, driven for change in a sometimes reckless fashion. Feudal Divisions of the Sidhe Just as Concordia is divided into a number of smaller kingdoms in North America, so to is the Isle of the Mighty (Great Britain). There is no high king; Albion, Caledonia and Cymru are all autonomous and despite sharing borders there is very limited travel between them except official courtiers. *Kingdom - encompass nations with borders that existed long before the Shattering. *Principalities - smaller "kingdoms" with sovereigns called princes that owe fealty to the King. *Cantrevs - similar to principalities except that the king/queen is the direct sovereign and their representative, a lord or lady regent governs in their name. *Duchies - encompass entire regions and cities. They hold vast power typically consist of many holdings and have representatives in the Court of Dragons. Nobles of this rank are renowned for maintaining strict order. *Counties- generally contain 2-3 noble households. They tend to be hotbeds of intruige and scandal, the target of commoner revolts which in turn give rise to draconian rulership from counts and countesses. *Baronies- generally contain 1-2 noble households. They are normally solid and usually loyal to their leiges. In cities, they are typically the size of a neighborhood, in the country the size of a small town or village. *Fief- small territories held by knights as a reward for loyal serivce. They may contain a small holding or a trod but do not necessarily contain one. *Household- the family, retainers and servants of a noble. Even holdless nobles have households. Affinity Nature for Scathach. The non-Scathach sidhe have not been in the terrestrial long enough to have an affinity. Birthrights *Awe and Beauty - add two dots of Appearance during creation, even if this increased their score above 5. When impassioned, all their social rolls (especially Expression or Intimidation) are at a -2 difficulty. Anyone who tries to directly attack an angry sidhe must make a Willpower roll with variable difficulty between 6-9. These abilities only affect kithain, creatures of the Dreaming and the Enchanted unless the sidhe calls upon the Wyrd. *Noble Bearing - Any cantrip (or other supernatural power) that would directly cause a sidhe to look foolish or ill-dignifieed immediately fails. sidhe cannot botch Etiquette rolls. Frailty Banality's Curse: The Resurent sidhe gain twice as much temporary banality as other kithain. They have a +1 difficulty at any roll where the difficulty is equals their banality. Sidhe are also prone to fits of depression. Weaker-willed sidhe can fall back and forth between their legacies dusk-to-dusk or moonrise-to-moonrise. Strong-willed sidhe can escape the mania of this by retreating into their legacies but they will do so passionately and excessively. go to the Main Changeling Page or go to the Kith Page